Gateau St. Honore

Comment - Gateau St. Honore is a French dessert. I saw a picture of it online and knew that I had to try making it. The dessert turned out to be more challenging to make than I expected. There were many steps involved. I used store bought puff pastry, to save some time, but it still took me all day to make. Was it worth it? Well, yes and no. The downside was the crunch of caramel on the cream puffs. It reminded me of hard candy, which I am not a big fan of. Although I did like the final presentation. The vanilla bean custard was the best part and combined nicely with the blueberries and puff pastry . The left over cream puffs without caramel were really good too. Will I make the dessert again? Probably not, but I am glad that I tried it. I ended up making a medium and small version of the Gateau St. Honore. The one with blackberries is the smaller of the two.


Ingredients
1 package Puff pastry (or homemade)

Choux pastry balls - (To find the recipe, follow the link, look at the Eclair post. you’ll find the recipe there listed as Pate a Choux)

Pastry Cream (you may have to use google translate or you could look at the pastry cream recipe at Rouxbe.com since it is almost identical)

Blackberries with powdered sugar to taste

Spun Sugar ( I omit the lemon drops from this recipe)

Directions
Step 1 – The crust for the larger Gateau St. Honore did not turn out as thick as I would have liked. I would recommend cutting out two 9″ round circles from the puff pastry. With the remaining dough form a ring for the choux pastry balls to sit on. Make sure and roll the extra dough out before making the ring so that it is smooth before baking. Stack the layers and bake until done (20 or so minutes).

Step 2 – Make the Choux pastry balls. Follow link above for recipe. Make the pastry balls medium size. I dipped the cream puff tops in caramel before I filled them with vanilla custard.

Step 3 – Make the custard. See link above for recipe. I used a whole vanilla bean, but you could use half that much. Make sure and strain the black seeds out before mixing into the egg, sugar, cornstarch mixture.

Step 4 – Make the spun sugar. See recipe above. I omit the lemon drops in the recipe. Make sure your kitchen is covered in newspaper before you begin because this process is messy. Dip the Choux pastry balls in caramel and place them on a metal oiled pan or sheet. The caramel will cool quickly. Fill the bottom of the Choux pastry balls with vanilla bean custard (using a pastry bag and nozzle). Drizzle hot caramel over the bottom where you inserted the custard and stick it around the puff pastry.

Step 5 – Sprinkle powdered sugar over blackberries and mix. Pour the berries over your custard on the dessert or serve on the side.

Brownie Truffle

Comment – These brownie truffles turned out really good. I turned 1/2 a batch of brownies into crumbs with my blender. Then I added  just enough caramel sauce to moisten the crumbs and formed them into balls. I used a Tbsp to measure the amount for each ball so they would be uniform and dipped them in chocolate. I put the left over chocolate in a bag, trimmed a corner and decorated the truffles. When I finished making them, I put them in the freezer so the chocolate would set up.


Brownie Recipe

Caramel sauce – 4 caramels & a little bit of milk (2 tbsp). Cook over low in sauce pan.

Chocolate sauce – 1/4 -1/2 cup chocolate 1-2 Tbsp milk and 1 tsp butter. Cook over water in a double boiler to melt.

Caramel Thumbprint Cookies

Comment -The dough for this recipe reminds me of brownie batter. They are thumb print cookies rolled in pecans, filled with caramel sauce, and decorated with chocolate sauce. I thought they looked fancy and were good but very rich. I formed the balls of dough by taking 2 tsp’s full of batter and rolling it together. The batter would stick to my tsp so I dipped it in water before filling it with dough each time. It was easier to work with the dough when it had been refrigerated. I had to add a little heavy whipping cream to smooth out the chocolate sauce and make it more runny for drizzling over the cookies, but besides that I followed the recipe exactly.

Recipe